Thriving's vital sign: Moving forward
October, 2005

by William Damon

When I was beginning my academic career as an assistant professor, out of the blue a kindly dean offered me a traveling fellowship to spend a month visiting Jean Piaget's lab in Geneva, Switzerland. Piaget was the greatest living developmental psychologist at the time (and perhaps the greatest of all time), and his writings were far and away the strongest influence on my own early work. I was thrilled at the chance to meet the grand master, and it turned out to be just in time, as Piaget passed away the following year.

Yet in preparing for the visit, I had two significant handicaps. First, my French was abysmal, and I had only a couple of months to cram in some practice. Second, although I had devoured many of Piaget's writings with great appreciation, I (like many others in the field) had found his most recent book to be virtually undecipherable - and, to add to my anxiousness, this was a book that Piaget had meant to be his solution to the most important and difficult mystery of all: what causes human development. Piaget called his answer to this question "equilibration"(also the title of the book); but, to be perfectly frank, that was almost all that I took away from it after many hours trying to understand the turgid text.

Nevertheless, despite these two rather serious handicaps, I was determined to get everything possible out of the trip, learning first-hand the master's own solution to development's deepest mystery. When I first got to Geneva, it looked like I was in luck, because Piaget was teaching a seminar on this very topic. Clearly it was something that was at the forefront of Piaget's mind in his final days. Le Patron (this was what all his students and assistants called him, something I have yet to pull off in my own lab) invited me to sit in on the seminar during my month-long stay. Yet soon it became apparent that Piaget's statements in the seminar were just as impenetrable as those in his book. And it was not just my shaky French: the native students told me over coffees and beers that they were every bit as lost as I was.

But finally, on the last day of my visit (the timing of which made me wonder if this was somehow meant to be), the great man said something that I actually understood and still find illuminating to this very day. Piaget made the statement in exasperation, at a student's obvious confusion (shared by all of us) over just what equilibration is and how it works in development. (Literally, the term means "achieving balance", and none of us could grasp how this creates developmental change). So Piaget, waving his arms in a circular manner, asked the student, "If you fall in the water, what's the best way to stay up?" Sounding very much on the spot, the student ventured, in quick succession: "Float? Tread water? Kick your feet around a lot and keep your head up?" "NO!" Piaget thundered. "You must swim, and in a direction. You must move forward. That will keep you steady. Plus, you may also have the advantage of getting somewhere. That is what equilibration in development is. It is moving forward, steadily, never trying to stay in one place."

Now, many times in my career I have been asked to speculate on how we can tell when a young person is "on track" developmentally. Most recently this question has come up as a focus of "The Forum on Thriving" that Thrive Foundation for Youth has hosted. What, exactly, counts as thriving in youth development? How can we know when young people are thriving and when they aren't?

In many ways, I have found that answering this question is as formidable a challenge as unraveling the mystery of developmental change. The main problem is that any presumed behavioral indicator of thriving (or non-thriving) is misleading when taken out of context. For example, a pediatrician might venture that a seven-year-old child who still struggles with simple speech is not thriving and therefore suggest that this be taken as an indicator. But then there is the case of Helen Keller, a beacon of thriving during her entire life, despite the severe handicaps that retarded her speech for all of her youth. And it is astonishing how many Olympic athletes spent their early years fighting physical impairments; how many successful businessmen and businesswomen had some form of learning disability; how many brilliant scientists failed elementary math; and how many world leaders struggled with social problems in their youth. How could we have determined early on that these folks were headed for success despite their apparent incapacities - that, in a developmental sense, they indeed were thriving when they were young?

Here I believe that Piaget's solution to the mystery of developmental change provides us with clues about what is important to look for in a young person's life. More revealing than any particular behavioral signposts (such as tests passed, distances jumped, prizes won, or popularity gained) is the direction and meaning of a young person's efforts. The relevant questions are: Is the young person attempting to move forward towards a worthwhile goal? Is the young person's goals - or "purposes", as my research team calls life's most fulfilling goals - understood and valued by the community of people that the young person needs for support while growing up? When these two conditions apply - forward movement towards a fulfilling purpose, and a structure of social support consistent with that effort - there is every likelihood that the child will experience eventual success. Although the youngster may be struggling or even failing on certain specific behavioral measures, in a developmental sense the youngster is thriving.

Life, much like any sport, is often a game of recovery. Also, to add one further metaphor to the mix, development is a movie and not a snapshot. A photo of a frustrated batter whiffing on three fastballs is not going to tell you whether he is going to hit the ball out of the park the next time at bat; nor will it tell you whether his team is going to win the game. But knowing about how the batter and his team cope with setbacks, about their determination, morale, and grit when they find themselves in tough situations, and about their momentum during this point in their season, will tell you a lot. Moving forward with purpose is a predictor of success for teams as well as individuals.

One of the most intriguing findings in the developmental sciences over the past few years is the phenomenon of the "U-shaped curve". Observing children learning to master new skills in dozens of domains (math, writing, sports, the arts), psychologists have noticed a pattern: as the learner struggles to master difficult new challenges, there is often an initial decline in the learner's skill. Errors are made on tasks that previously seemed easy, and the learner feels more "stupid" than ever before. This is the "dip" in performance that scientists describe by the "U-shaped curve" model. It turns out that the "stupid mistakes", in retrospect, were nothing more than "growth errors". Once the learner gets past the dip, the learner's performance rises rapidly to heights never before achieved.

So development, too, is a game of recovery. When the recovery is directed towards a goal and informed by learning, it will lead to growth. We can see this forward movement when we look long-term at the whole dynamic process, watching the movie rather than the stills. It is then that we can recognize thriving where others may notice only error, failure, and frustration. The subjects of our observations - the young people in the midst of this bewildering, often terrifying, and always wondrous process of developmental change - benefit greatly when at some point, people around them are able to see that they are thriving even amidst the turmoil of youth. Then these youngsters know there are people who truly believe in them, and this welcome message can make all the difference.

William Damon is the Director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence